What School Teaches

49 Hunt Hawkins What School Teaches My son's third grade teacher, Mrs. Littleton, tells him he'll never hold a job. And I can see his ears both not hearing and hearing the way an eight-year-old's do. He bounces around so much I've nicknamed him "kangaroo." Sometimes he loses the assignment, sometimes the work he's done— the nouns beginning with "b" clipped from the newspaper and pasted to a sheet, the three dozen simple subtraction problems, the page on volcanoes paraphrased from the World Book with photos of Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Fuji. She's a large woman, childless, who says the students are her kids. The motes in the sunlight of her room revolve Uke galaxies. So I try to help him, saying he must sit stiU, keep track of work done, withstand boredom, know what the teacher says and be able to put it in his own words. These are the things he'll have to do to keep a job. ...